1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to image processing, and specifically, a method and an apparatus for detecting an object based on stereo vision.
2. Description of the Related Art
A technology for detecting an object by using images collected by a stereo camera, such as patent document U.S. Pat. No. 8,009,871B for which the title of the invention is “METHOD AND SYSTEM TO SEGMENT DEPTH IMAGES AND TO DETECT SHAPES IN THREE-DIMENSIONALLY ACQUIRED DATA”, patent document U.S. Pat. No. 5,202,928A for which the title of the invention is “SURFACE GENERATION METHOD FROM BOUNDARIES OF STEREO IMAGES”, and an article “Stereo Person Tracking with Adaptive Plan-View Templates of Height and Occupancy Statistics” published by Michael Harville in 2003, has existed.
As an example of positioning or detection of a person, person positioning is the base of the technology for humans, and a service can be provided or pushed only after a person has been accurately positioned. The person positioning means that a person is detected, and position information of the person indoor or outdoor, namely, coordinate values of the person in a world coordinate system (x,y,z) is obtained.
The core of the person positioning technology based on the stereo vision is the technology of the person detection and tracking from a sequence of depth images or disparity maps. Now, it is still a challenging technical problem, mainly because the shape and appearance of a person largely varies and shielding problems frequently occur. In the indoor scene, the occurrence frequency of the shielding is higher since the background is complex and there are a lot of persons, thereby often leading to failure of the person detection and tracking. Meanwhile, the viewing angle of a single stereo camera is limited, and the measurement error increases with the increase of the distance. Therefore, a plurality of stereo cameras may be placed to increase the viewing angle of the system and the effective measurement range, and reduce the shielding problems.